Vanderver protested at this.
“I remind you,” Vanderver growled, with a significant look, “that it will be unwise for you to make mistakes. As an acting representative of His Majesty the King of Sylvania, I enjoy immunities. I enjoy privileges—”
“Diplomatic privileges,” said Monseur Lespinasse. “That is no concern of mine. My concern is that you do not break the civil law.”
“I have broken no law!” said Vanderver, purple in the face. “I have told no lie!”
The juge d’instruction held up his hand.
“And I tell you in return,” he said sharply, “that either your story or Monsieur Dermot’s must be untrue. Either the young lady never went into the arbor, in which case Monsieur Dermot is telling a falsehood. Or else she did go in, and for some reason you choose to deny that you saw her come out. In which case—” Again he held up his hand. “It is only fair to warn you, Dr. Vanderver, that Miss Weatherill told me you might try to kill her.”
They could hear a clock ticking in the overcrowded room.
“Kill?” said Vanderver.
“That is what I said.”
“But I did not know her!”
“Evidently she knew you,” answered M. Lespinasse. His sallow face was alive with bitterness; he fingered the rosette in his buttonhole. Then he took a step forward. “Miss Weatherill several times came to me at the prefecture of police. She told me of your — murderous activities in the past. I did not choose to believe her. It was too much of a responsibility. Responsibility! Now this happens, and I must take the responsibility for it at least. One more question, if you please. What have you to say to the maid’s story of the horn-handled knife?”
Vanderver’s voice was hoarse. “I never owned such a knife. I never saw one. I call you a son of—”
“It will not be necessary to finish,” said the juge d’instruction. “On the contrary, we shall finish.” He snapped his fingers, and one of the plainclothes men brought into the room an object wrapped in a newspaper.
“Our search of the arbor,” continued M. Lespinasse, “was perhaps more thorough than that of Monsieur Gant. This was found buried in the sand floor only a few feet away from where monsieur was sitting.”
There were more than damp stains of sand on the bright, wafer-thin blade in the newspaper; there were others. Monsieur Lespinasse pointed to them.
“Human blood,” he said.
At eleven o’clock Andrew Dermot was able to get out of the room.
They told him afterwards that he had made an admirable witness; that his replies had been calm, curt, and to the point; and that he had even given sound advice on details of legal procedure, contrasting those of England with those of the present country.
He did not remember this. He knew only that he must get out into the air and stop himself from thinking of Betty.
He stood on the front terrace of the hotel, as far removed as possible from the arbor in whose floor the knife had been buried. Half a mile away the lights of the principal street in the town, the Promenade des Francais, twinkled with deathly pallor. A cool wind swept the terrace.
They took Vanderver down the front steps and bundled him into a car. There was a chain round Vanderver’s wrists; his legs shook so that they had to push him up into the car. The car roared away, with a puff of smoke from the exhaust — carbon monoxide, which meant death — and only the juge d’instruction remained behind searching Vanderver’s room for some clue as to why a sudden, meaningless murder had been done at dusk beside a commonplace hotel.
Andrew Dermot put his hands to his temples, pressing hard.
Well, that was that.
He sat down on the terrace. The little round tables had red tops, and the color did not please him, but he remained. He ordered brandy, which he could not taste. The brandy was brought to him by the same underporter who had suggested an underground passage in the arbor, and who, agog, seemed to want to entertain him with speculations about motives for murder. Dermot chased him away.
But if Betty had to go — “go” was hardly the word for that — where was the sense in it? Why? Why? Vanderver was presumably not a homicidal maniac. Besides, all Dermot’s legal instincts were bewildered by so clumsy a crime. If Vanderver were guilty, why had he from the first persisted in that unnecessary lie of saying Betty had never come out of the arbor? Why hadn’t he simply faded away, never professing to have seen anything at all? Why thrust himself at that entrance as though determined to ensure suspicion for himself?
What Dermot had not permitted himself to wonder was where Betty herself might be.
But suppose Vanderver had been telling the truth?
Nonsense! Vanderver could not be telling the truth. People do not vanish like soap-bubbles out of guarded tunnels.
Presently they would be turning out the lights here on this windy, deserted terrace. The Hotel Suchard was ready, in any case, to close its doors for the winter; it would close its doors very early tonight. Behind him, in lighted windows, glowed the lounge, the smoking-room, the dining-room where he had first seen Betty. The head porter, his footsteps rapping on hardwood, darkened first the dining-room and then the lounge. Dermot would have to go upstairs to his room and try to sleep.
Getting to his feet, he walked through the thick-carpeted hall. But he could not help it. He must have one more look at the arbor.
It was veritable tunnel now: a black shape inside which, for twenty yards, Chinese lanterns glowed against the roof. The sand was torn where the knife had been dug out. Near that patch, two shovels had been propped against the wall in readiness for deeper excavations next morning. It was when he noted those preparations, and realized what they meant, that Dermot’s mind turned black; he had reached his lowest depth.
He was so obsessed by it that he did not, at first, hear footfalls on the tiled terrace. He turned round. Two persons had come out to join him — but they came by different windows, and they stopped short and stared at each other as much as they stared at him.
One of these persons was M. Lespinasse, the juge d’instruction.
The other was Betty Weatherill.
“And now, mademoiselle,” roared Lespinasse, “perhaps you will be good enough to explain the meaning of this ridiculous and indefensible trick?”
M. Lespinasse, his cheek-bones even more formidable, was carrying a briefcase and a valise. He let both fall.
“I had to do it,” said Betty, addressing Dermot. “I had to do it, my dear.”
She was not smiling at him. Dermot felt that presently, in the sheer relief of nerves, they would both be shouting with laughter. At the moment he only knew that she was there, and that he could touch her.
“One moment,” said Lespinasse, coldly interrupting what was going on. “You do well, Monsieur Dermot, to demand an explanation—”
“But I don’t. So long as she’s—”
“—of this affair.” The juge d’instruction raised his voice. “I can now tell you, in fact I came downstairs to tell you, how Miss Weatherill played this trick. What I do not know is why she did it.”
Betty whirled round. “You know how?”
“I know, mademoiselle,” snapped the other, “that you planned this foolishness and carried it out with the assistance of Alys Marchand, who deserves a formidable stroke of the boot behind for her part in the affair. When I found Alys ten minutes ago capering round her room waving a packet of thousand-franc notes, her behavior seemed to call for some explanation.” He looked grim. “Alys was very shortly persuaded to give one.”